Lives of Mothers & Daughters: Growing Up With Alice Munro - Softcover

Munro, Sheila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771065124 ISBN 13: 9780771065125

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2002

Synopsis

“So much of what I think I know – and I think I know more about my mother’s life than almost any daughter could know – is refracted through the prism of her writing. Such is the power of her fiction that sometimes it even feels as though I’m living inside an Alice Munro story.”

The millions of people around the world who read Alice Munro’s work are enthralled by her insight into the human heart. Consider, then, what it would be like to have a mother who was so all-knowing. Worse, if that mother were world-famous as you were growing up and trying to make your own way as a writer, while you yourself followed in her footsteps, raising a family and trying to write on the side.

That is Sheila Munro’s dilemma, and it gives this book special fascination for anyone interested in their own relationship with their own mother, or their own daughter.

This book is, in effect, an intimate, affectionate biography of Alice Munro. It describes in a way that only a close relative could, the details of the family background. We follow the family history from the Laidlaws who left Scotland in the early 19th century, to Alice Munro’s birth in 1931, her early years and marriage all the way to the current family, including Alice Munro’s grandchildren. One of the many fascinations of the book is that faithful readers of Alice’s work – and are there any other kind? – will find constant echoes of settings, situations, and characters that occur in her fiction. So this book is not only a fascinating biography of Alice Munro, it also provides an informative commentary to the stories we all know.

But Sheila Munro goes further. As a writer growing up in the shadow of a writing mother, she’s able to write frankly and personally about being a daughter and about being a writer. With the publication of this book – richly embellished with scores of family photographs – Sheila Munro has established herself as a skilled and successful author in her own right.

· Includes dozens of fascinating Munro family snapshots scattered throughout the text
· Full of real-life details that will fascinate any Alice Munro fan

About this title

From the Back Cover

“Sheila Munro establishes herself as...a writer of sophistication and skill. Writing about a literary figure as revered as Alice Munro requires not only integrity but considerable verbal dexterity. Sheila Munro has both.”
–Montreal Gazette

“A perfect mix of biography and personal memoir.”
–Hamilton Spectator

About the Author

Sheila Munro was born in 1953, the eldest daughter of Jim and Alice Munro. After university she worked in a certain bookstore, reviewed books for the Vancouver Sun, and wrote for magazines. She lives in Powell River, British Columbia.

Edition details

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0771065124
• ISBN 13: 9780771065125
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 280